I’ve held so tightly to the past in all aspects, romanticized it and loved every moment of what was that I haven’t sat in what is for very long.  I’ve constantly tried to be somewhere else, either remembering things that happened, the good times or I’ve been on to the next thing, worked to create the next thing. I haven’t sat and just enjoyed where we are, where I’m at, who I am and who I’ve become.  I had a dream last night that my 8 year old was at a party and wasn’t listening to me when I was asking a question about something he wanted.  He was ignoring me entirely and I told him that we were going to leave his own party if he was going to keep being disrespectful and not able to answer a simple question.  He started crying and we ended up walking across a field and he was giving me his typical sass and being sad and he told me that I made a big deal out of nothing.  Then we were in an SUV and he was driving.  He was telling me that what happened was nothing and the disrespect essentially wasn’t as important as I was making it.  He drove off the side of the road because he couldn’t steer and he was going too fast even after I told him to slow down, and we ended up going down a really steep mountain hill and we ended up in a parking lot with me steering and telling him to keep braking.  I share this because there is a part of me that knows I’m trying to stop him from growing too quickly like I can stop time.

The day before I was going through his baby clothes and asking myself how he got so big so fast.  These clothes have sat in my basement for years—my son is 8 now—and I hadn’t looked at them since we packed them from the townhouse.  I’ve struggled to let go of those things because they represent a lot.  They represent the time I became a mother and the short time I had with him, the interrupted time I had with him as I was trying to navigate working and being a mom for the first time.  They also represent what we lost, the hope we had for another baby, when we lost our second child.  I know both kinds of people who would look at the clothes and just let them go and others who, like me, would struggle because we’re not just seeing the clothes.  We’re seeing all that was and all that could have been—literally. There were certain pieces I looked at and I remembered exactly the moment he wore it and what we were doing and my husband asked me how I could remember that and I told him that this is how my mind works—those moments are imprinted on my mind and then I pulled up a picture showing him the moment I was talking about.  I REMEMBER.  My baby isn’t a baby, I know that.  But clinging to the past isn’t going to change him growing up. 

Clinging to the past isn’t going to keep me young, on vacation in California with my parents, safe with them, having so much fun in the pool, going to Universal or the zoo or the animal park.  Clinging to that memory isn’t going to make it happen again.  I need to be where I’m at and accept that things have changed, we’ve grown, and this is very much a new beginning.  I can appreciate what we’ve done, what we did, and I can love what my life was like.  It’s easy to get stuck there when there are issues in the present.  But the only way we can maintain that presence is to be present.  We need to deal with where we are at and enjoy the now and we can make changes toward a better future, but we can never relive the past.  I’m a Potter nerd and I’ve often considered the story surrounding The Resurrection Stone. There have been many stories of similar items, all with the same message, that returning from death won’t work because that person is no longer of this time.  I never understood that.  I always assumed that, if brought back to live again, they would kind of pick up where we left off, wanting to be the same person and do the same things.  I never understood that the break in time caused with death creates a disconnect from what is for these people.  So the point is that we need to be of our time and not lament what is no longer here, wishing we could have it again. 

Letting go isn’t easy because we have an emotional attachment to what was, perhaps an attachment to how we remember it and the feeling it gave us at that time.  There are things we all wish we could do differently but that doesn’t mean we will ever be able to change what happened.  In order to begin again, we have to do something new even if it feels weird. We make new memories and we adapt to what is.  We have to wake up and be happy where we are and adapt to the changes or we let the change wash us away entirely. No matter how intensely we remember, we can’t live in our heads—the real world is out here.  The real world is what we have made it and we need to have an immense appreciation for where we are.  We need to be grateful for what was while alive in what is.  We need to pack up the old clothes, the ones that really mean something, and we need to lovingly donate the rest and allow them to live again and serve purpose in someone else’s life.  That is the gift: the ability to let things live again, not keep them stuck in a  moment.  That is how things go on.  The memory is wonderful but the reality is so much better—be where we are and allow life to grow and flow as it is meant to. Let the rest go.